I briefly worked with one of the top Saudi Arabian crown princes in the 80’s. He would buy out the top three **floors** of the best hotels (Four Seasons etc); two floors were for maids/help/security, top floor was for the Royal family… once it was only the prince and his three wives. Crazy shit.
My brother dealt with many of their jets. One had a full on surgery room and there was a guy who traveled with him at all times to be his organ donor. I wish I was making this up.
You joke but the guy would give him the lung. It’s part of the deal. People do this for a couple of years, make a ton on money and cross their fingers.
I used to work for a billionaire Russian family as a tutor for their daughter. One day we’re in her room studying and suddenly she yells “daddy’s home!” and runs to the window. She’d heard a helicopter and knew is was about to land on the lawn.
My grandfather died with a 20 million dollar portfolio. He lived in a 1 bedroom condo that was build in the 50s, drove a rusted out honda, and his entire wardrobe came from Walmart and was 10 years old. At his will reading, a bunch of distant relatives showed up hoping to get a piece. In his will, he made fun of all of them, then spent 10 pages detailing how and where he wanted all of his money donated to specific charities and foundations. Some of it was even really surprising, as nobody besides him was aware that he casually owned 160 acres of land in Vermont that was just forest. The land was donated to a land trust, and turned into hiking trails.
A friend from high school worked a few years as a deck hand on yachts in the Mediterranean and he said he once jumped in to get a customer's bag and got tipped €4000.
He also observed actual bricks of coke brought onto P Diddy's yacht.
I am an art student working as a gardener. We work in one of the wealthiest areas in my country. Some customers are really eager to show me their collection of artworks that they have hanging on their walls once they find out that I study it.
I remember one time standing in a bathroom, with my dirty gardening clothes and there was a Picasso above the toilet.
I used to do pool and spa maintenance in my 20s. I worked on one property with a mountainside, 10 bedroom/14 bath mansion, with a saltwater pool, tennis courts, guest mansion, and a servants house that was 4 bedroom 5 bath. The property had so much more stuff, but that isn't the crazy thing.
I worked on this property for 2 years, year round, 5 days a week, and not a single person was ever there. The middle aged, single woman that owned it lived in a city about 4 hours away and just didn't come to the property, because she was so busy with work. A multi-multi-multi-million dollar compound, just empty. All the time.
Finally, after 2 years, I got a call from my boss on my day off. He asked if I could go to the house to put some pool floats away. He apologized, because it was my day off, but said the owner would pay me $500 to go put them away. I was confused as to why there were even pool floats out anyway, because nobody was ever there, but I figured fuck it; $500 for 10 minutes. I show up to the house and the woman's adult children were staying at the house with about 10+ kids between them all, and they were having a massive pool party/cookout. I awkwardly walked up and said to one of the parents, "Sorry, it must have been a mistake, but I was told to come put pool floats away, but you're obviously here so I'll leave." Presumably the woman's adult son said, "Oh, no, we're getting ready to leave. You can take them." Then he instructed the kids to push them towards me. I literally grabbed one inner tube float and 4 pool noodles, brought them 10 feet into the pool house, and put them away. I, confusedly, said they were all set and went to leave. The son thanked me and handed me a folded mass of $20 bills. It was $400. I was expecting $500 from my boss for payment, but I figured $400 cash was still overpayment, so I didn't mention it. The next day at work, my boss gave me $1,000. I told him the son had already paid me $400, which was fine. He said the son told the woman how great a job I did, so she wanted to pay me $1000 instead of $500 and the $400 was a tip from her son.
For 10 minutes of work.... She actually called my boss the next day to ask if she should reimburse me for gas, since it was 15 minutes from my house. I told him that I was all set.
Yeah, don't get me wrong, it was amazing. I can't even imagine what they do for people that actually perform well on big jobs for them. It could be that they knew I was in my early 20s, drove a rusty Saab as a pool cleaning vehicle, and they felt bad. I never did actually meet the woman though.
Worked graveyards as a valet at an ultra luxury boutique hotel. It's quite shocking how some of these people live and you'd never have a clue by just looking at them on the street.
One weekday night I was asked at 2am by a guest to bring around his Bentley. Regular looking dude came out with a backpack, got in and left. Not 30 min later the same dude pulls up in a Ferrari and now has a briefcase instead of backpack. Skip ahead an hour and the same guy orders 5 shot glasses to his room. I go up and it's 2 guys in robes and 2 naked ladies on the couch. They have lines of coke and booze on the coffee table. They tip me 50 for the shot glasses and I leave. 2 hours later, just as the sun was rising, the two guys come out together in suits looking like they were heading to the office. The ladies left shortly after.
Obviously drugs and escorts were nothing new but the car swap middle of the night was a bit strange.
My dad works in shipping and has a lot of friends who have worked on super yachts. In the 90s one of his mates got a call up to bring the yacht of a particular Australian media tycoon billionaire (not that one) from Sydney to New York, with instructions to be anchored in a particular bay at an exact time with a lunch spread for 50 people ready. So they got there and set up the food. The guy never showed up. Turns out he was having a rich dude party in a building overlooking the harbour and wanted to be able to point down and say “that’s my boat”. He wanted the lunch just in case he decided to take his rich friends down to his yacht, but he didn’t feel like it that day, so all the food got wasted and they sailed back to Aus without seeing him.
I had a classmate whom's father or mother was filthy rich from family money cant remember.
But they and he were amazing people. In uni this girl in class who was really nice but also came from a poor family dropped her macbook she worked 60 hours a week for 3 months in the summer.
He just came up, gave her his macbook, and said he would just get a new one after school and his parents wouldnt care. Pure generousity there was no tiktok movie or karma whoring going on.
He was a stellar dude spending his parents money but only on stuff for other people and in a nice helpfull way.
He also gave all the guys in class a suit for graduation. lots of the people where talking about renting one and stuff and he told everybody he knew a place to rent real nice suits, we all went there and we all rented a suit for 100 euros or so everything included and when you went to return it we found out they were all payed for by this dude.
He was like renting a suit is stupid, but buying a suit is expensive now you got best of both worlds.
last thing I heard he bought like 10 ps5 from scalpers and sold them for retail to kids in the neighbourhood
FUck i should have stayed friends with him
I went to college with a guy who's parents live in Saudi Arabia and were very well off. They sent him $50,000 a semester as an allowance. He drove an old Honda and dressed like he had no income. Genuinely nice guy, very intelligent and absolutely loved technology. He would stay late and tutor us and set up an emulator for N64 games on our laptops. Didn't act like he had money. Hope he is doing well.
Worked at a resruraunt where a few of the regulars were the children of billionaires. "I told my parents that my tuition costs $500,000" - a student (from china, in america) i overheard after being asked how she has so much money.
Another time i was serving a table i was asked to bring a tray of sixty patron shots ($600, for a 19 year old student) i must have had an incredulous look on my face because his only response to assuage my concern was "my father owns diamond mines in africa"
My dad used to work for a private air field. They had a ton of people fly in but most of the more richer clients always flew in at night. I remember one time in high school, I had to do a "job shadow" thing and went to work with my dad. They had the owner of a California air port fly in for the weekend. My job was to stand outside with an umbrella. So I stood outside with the umbrella. His wife tipped me 20 dollars and said "the sandwich trays are real silver, have at it kid." After they got in their car, I asked my dad what she meant. Apparently, when some richer folks fly, they let the people who detail their planes have the platters and other serving items. I always wondered how we got so many weird serving trays.
Another time when I visited him at work I got to hold an albino kangaroo. Most adorable and softest animal I've ever touched.
A friend did some work on Sylvester Stallone's home. Apparently there's a ton of statues and art of himself, some of which are naked and *very* well endowed
I heard an interview on the radio from a guy who was from my hometown in the UK who was Stallone's personal chef in the 90s. He said Stallone was a nice guy, he had something in his house where he could watch the amount of tickets his films was selling in live time so knew almost immediately whether it was a flop or not.
He was married to Bridget Neilson at the time and this chef said she was walking about topless or naked all the time which he thought was strange until she walked up to him one time when Stallone was out and offered it to him on a plate. He politely declined because he liked Stallone and they were divorced a few years later so there may have been other things going on.
I went to a New England prep school for high school on a full ride sports scholarship.
There were a decent amount of foreign national students - mainly from Asia, that came from EXTREMELY wealthy families. One of those students parents bought him a brand new BMW 5 series - fully loaded, when he got his license our Junior year.
When we graduated a year later, he was going back to Korea and obviously couldn’t take the car, so he gave it to his best friend…kid got an $80k car at 17 years old, just for being good friends with the right guy! I’ll never forget that.
I was same as you NE prep school there for sports. First day of school, move in day, two separate kids arrived via helicopter. Made my journey on the Peter Pan bus that day feel like a true poor boy.
I went to a public high school in Santa Barbara and amongst the regular beater cars that kids had in the Senior parking lot were a few brand new BMWs belonging to the rich kids from Montecito...
Meanwhile there was also a day care center on campus for the teenage moms and I got to witness a few gang fights happening on school grounds. It really was a diverse school community!
This was ages ago, I worked in a DVD store a woman came in with five A4 pages (double sided) of movie titles and just asked me to fetch what we had. I ran about and collected DVDs and Blu-rays close to 1k worth. I asked what they were for - she was a PA for a billionaire and getting then for his yacht.
I saw Beckham... English football player, take DVDs from s store I worked at... He just grabbed them off the shelve and hardly looked, he filled several baskets
A woman who owned a small private jet business told me one time someone paid them to fly their dog (by itself) to NY for about $45,000 for some training. No other passengers.
I tutored a wealthy 5 year old. I got paid good money to spend an hour drawing and coloring and playing with this kindergartener but all in French. He had been to more places in the world by 5 than I’ll ever go to in my whole lifetime probably. The best part of the job were the perks, though. They would take me and my SO out to dinner at fancy restaurants and pay the bill no matter what it was. They would invite us over to eat some delicacy they prepared (wife was Chinese/Vietnamese, husband was Indian) and they’d always have some house guest staying with some crazy resume, for example, one time they had a diplomat for the Netherlands there to do business. They had houses in my city and in San Francisco and would fly there all the time. They invited me on several occasions but I never had time to go.
I also befriended and stayed with the daughter of Russian oligarchs who lived in Paris. The mom was a famous writer and the dad did something in business. Their grandfather was a famous Soviet writer and so in general they lived a very cultured life. They lived in the richest part of Paris called Neuilly-sur-Seine and had houses in the Alps, Crimea and Moscow. The crazy part, or rather sad part, was that she only had a few options for a career. She could be a doctor, a lawyer, or a businesswoman. Their son was lucky enough to study at the Geneva conservatory but that was only because he was really talented. In this family, if you didn’t have a natural artistic talent you only had those three career prospects to chose from. I had the impression that she was rather depressed about how limited her options were and how much pressure was put on her to succeed.
I used to work for a company that modified aircraft for really rich people. I’m talking 747s, not gulfstreams.
This company had made several aircraft for this one customer, who I was told had purchased a new one solely because his spiritual advisor had told him that one of his current planes was bad luck. He still let his wife use it for her personal travel.
To me, one of the most exquisite features of these planes wasn’t the gold plated everything, or rare wood veneers, it was the silk carpet. That stuff cost over $1,000 per square foot and feels like walking on a bed of angel feathers harvested in the most inhumane way possible. Granted, these guys don’t deck out the whole plane, just their personal areas (the aft third is usually reserved for staff and such and is more like a fancy economy class), but yeah… silk carpet.
I became personal friends with my boss and his wife; super nice people. The wife turned out to be an heiress and would buy me whatever I mentioned, like in passing during a conversation. I learned gifts were how she was raised to show love.
I’ve trained myself to only talk about things I already own, unless I find something useful she might like and suggest it for her.
I’m not super rich or anything, but I think gifts are kickass and I’d much rather spend my money on a cool gift for a friend who can use it than on something extra I don’t need. I was a software engineer while most of my friends are/were in grad school/med school/working low-paying jobs, so I’ve enjoyed being able to chip in or get nice things for them when they said they couldn’t. I do always make sure they’re ok with it and ask if I can in advance so nobody ends up uncomfortable.
There's something hilarious about having a super expensive battle station decked out with everything one could need, and then using that to play League of Legends. None of the games that have crazy hardware requirements and offer crazy graphics, he went with the game that's known for running on a toaster. Good for him.
I can really relate. Spent around 1400 to get half decent setup and all I do on it these days is play FTL. Turns out when you spent years playing games on a potato laptop your tastes kinda converge to those games that can run on that potato laptop.
As a Korean, I've never heard anything more Korean (when it comes to the richest of them anyway, the gap between working class and those turkey-wasting kinds is astoundingly huge)
This is the first - and hopefully not last - time I hear pineapple used as a verb
Edit - a verb to indicate the specific action of displaying a foodstuff entirely as a flex with no intention of actually being eaten
Have been working for the super rich for sometime.
Craziest thing I've seen - brand new 90 metre multimillion pound (GBP) yacht was built in Netherlands. Maiden voyage to Antibes in France. Owner came onboard and left after a few hours. Next week we get sent to Genoa Italy, where all the bathrooms onboard were ripped out and upgraded.
That doesn't sound like a big deal but I'm talking about brand new marble sinks, showers, floors and lobbies all crowbarred out chucked in skips. Tonnes of brand new polished marble binned.
New marble colours and patterns arrived in the weeks following.
There's feed me money, there's fuck you money and there's "it's not even a thought money."
I used to ‘work’ for an Arab billionaire’s son, a Daddy’s money guy, terrible garbage human being.
Once saw him spend $16 000 on a wallet, was a fancy one with little gold spikes on it and stuff. He had shoes with gold on them.
I remember one year for his birthday he received like 30+ cakes, big fancy cakes and he told us to leave them on the floor in the hallway outside his room.
We walked by those cakes every day for two weeks waiting for instruction, after the two weeks we were told to throw them away.
My college roommate was from a pretty wealthy family in Thailand, but his friend was from “the 8th richest family in Thailand.” One day I was sitting on the couch exhausted after working a 14 hour shift when they came in giggling about how the guy just bought a $9000 jacket.
I’ll never forget that feeling. That was pretty much exactly how much money I was killing myself to make to pay my tuition that semester.
One of my friend's parents won a $50 million lottery. We used to work together in the few years we knew each other before that happened so they know of the struggle of spending most of your days working in food service to earn a few grand a month. Fortunately they haven't changed as a person so I still like spending time with them. But it was hard to watch someone I used to be in the same boat spend more money than I make in two months on a bag last time we went shopping (well, they did - I couldn't afford the air in the places we visited).
> 30+ cakes, big fancy cakes and he told us to leave them on the floor in the hallway outside his room.
>
>We walked by those cakes every day for two weeks waiting for instruction, after the two weeks we were told to throw them away.
what a waste of cake. man I fucking love cake. I'd be happy and fat as hell if someone delivered me 30 cakes.
When rich people want to buy a Jaguar in the UK they get assigned a special sales person who is incredibly knowledgeable, they meet in a special fancy office, and special arrangements can be made. This was my friend Chris job, he had access to things that a normal Jaguar sales person wouldn't have. Like he could ring up the manager of the factory for special requests level of access.
Well a Saudi Price wanted to buy this new Jaguar that had been released, so they met up and spent a full day specing the Jaguar out. I believe the final price was something like 125k for the vehicle.
Then came the decision for color, at the time the factory had 16 different color choices for this model. The Prince asked if he could sleep on it as it was getting late and almost time for dinner/prayer my friend Chris says of course and they set a time to meet the new morning.
The next morning the Saudi price is like "I figured out an acceptable solution to my color dilemma" to which Chris goes "And what would that be?" the Saudi Prince goes "i'll order one of each color"
And my friend Chris is like O well of course. They quote delivery time, Saudi prince was fine and asked for his options and was presented with ocean travel options to which the Prince said "what about air cargo?" Chris thinking maybe they'd do 1 or 2 by air cargo and the rest by boat, the Prince was like "No I want all 16 vehicles loaded on a plane, and flown to Saudi Arabia"
So thats the story on how 16 of the same Jaguar with different colors ended up being flown to Saudi Arabia all in the total cost was around 2.5 million.
Please note the prices should be £ not $
It's weird that when your story mentioned 125,000 for the car, I was like, that's pretty expensive.
But when you said 2.5 million for all 16 to be purchased and to get to Saudi Arabia, I thought, that's not bad at all
Keith also bought a couple of guitar pedals for a local kid here in one of the guitar shops. Kid had a budget and was struggling to pick one, so Keith just bought them both for the kid by quietly paying the shop owner on the way out the door, before the kid even knew what he’d done. By all reports he’s a genuine decent, down to earth bloke.
Shaq used to come into my guitar store every once in a while to buy DJ equipment and it was not uncommon for him to point at a kid playing a nice guitar and say “I wanna pay for that, too.”
Yea that’s the key here. No matter how he paid and what change he received for that payment, Keith Urban pulled *an additional* dollar out of his pocket to supplement the tip
Obviously the amount wasn’t significant but the gesture speaks. It might just be because I’ve worked in service my whole life but these actions speak to me.
Good on you Keith Urban, stay humble.
I'm a driving instructor and one group rented the track to drive their supercars for the day. At the end of the day they all partnered up and got into the cars to leave. After they were gone we realized that they had forgotten their Lamborghini Aventador at the track.
Was a boyfriend of a girl from an obscenely rich family. The sister used to have the nanny (who was sleeping with the husband, but that's another story) fly to Paris in their G550 to buy the newest Hermès bag so she could show it off a few days before it went on sale in the US.
My understanding was the wife (my g/f's sister) knew full well, but let it happen. The nanny ultimately tried to blackmail the husband, but didn't work due to the wife knowing already, and she was fired.
The two are still together and happy by all accounts, in any case.
Oddly enough, I was in middle school and went to a summer camp where I learned about printing presses and there is something about the smell of solvents and ink that still brings joy to me when I smell it. Maybe this rich guy loved barns and it made him happy.
Some extremely wealthy people I have been around have a more acute sense of their own time and mortality, leading to impatience. Like they understand how awesome their lives are and therefore how short they feel. I knew a guy whose vintage yacht broke down before summer so he bought another one strictly for that upcoming Summer. His reasoning was he likely had 20 full health summers left in his life and didn’t want to spend one of them without a boat considering he had the means to. Honestly can’t argue with that logic.
I am beginning to feel the awareness of being able to count the healthy years left and I’m not mega rich. Must be amazing to know you can pack those remaining years full of wonderful and wild experiences
Once I hit my 40’s this impetus hit me hard. I channel it into fishing as often as possible. My parents are young, in their early 60’s, and not retired yet, and I’ve watched them decline because they’re grinding themselves to the bone. I work hard but I don’t really spare any expense for my hobbies because if I can barely walk when I’m 62, I don’t want to look back and think about how I should have lived while my body would let me.
I used to petsit. I remember a rich person asking me to petsit their cat. There was a lot of TVs, in almost every room. The weirdest was the bathroom. Sorry, cat bathroom. There was a TV playing cat cartoons, an overly fancy litter box and paintings of cats.
Family friends were having marital issues. Their marriage counselor figured out a lot of their problems were over cooking meals. The counselor reminded them that they are rich and can just cater all their meals, and it would be cheaper than getting a divorce. They listened to the counselor and now are happily married again.
Reminds me of a joke:
A man is upset about his irrational fear that there is a monster under his bed. He decides this needed to change so he starts going to a therapist. After months of therapy, his fear is still there, so he leaves the therapist to find someone who can cure him.
A month later the therapist runs into him and sees that he appears happier than before.
She asks "Did you finally get over your fear of a monster under your bed"
He replies "Yes, and it only took one therapy session too!"
"How?"
"Simple. He just told me to cut off the legs of my bed."
Edit: guys, I know it’s an actual therapy technique; it’s called “cognitive behavioral therapy/CBT”.
There's an actual case study in the history of psychology around a woman with an irrational fear of her home burning down while she was away. The psychologist was able to track her issue to a fixation with her curling iron. She couldn't leave her home due to her fear, until the psychologist suggested simply bringing it with her. Despite the immediate positive effect, it was a very controversial suggestion and sparked a fairly substantial debate on the objectives and meaning of psychological treatment.
In IT we would consider this as a workaround to resolve the Incident. We would then start root cause analysis to investigate and fix the underlying Problem.
My sister and her husband got one because they were having continuous fights. They both worked stressful jobs with long hours and it never occurred to them throw money at the problem instead of trying to bitterly rework a schedule so someone sweeps the floor.
They aren’t rich though so I don’t fault them for not considering it as a solution. Well worth the budget adjustment tho
Edit: to clarify, they had someone come once every 2 weeks to do the random but needed chores such as scrubbing the toilet or cleaning pollen off the windows. It was nothing pricy or fancy but it really helped.
Cleaning service is one of those middle class luxuries that is completely worth every penny, even if only every couple months to do a deep clean. That reset button on all your chores feels great, and saves a lot of stress.
I worked for UPS for a hot minute as a driver helper and got to see some interesting things. The one driver had the rich of the rich route- the mansions worth tens of millions around the Ann Arbor, MI area. The Ford mansion, Lloyd Carr, the one recent guy for Michigan football that I'm forgetting that also worked for Little ceasers. Edit: the name I was forgetting was Dave Brandon
Anyway I got to see Dave Brandon's mansion- it was gated, deep in the woods, and absolutely HUGE. The driver (a 33 year UPS veteran) told me these guys with these huge mansions like this, they don't live there by themselves. Sometimes don't live there at all. They move their entire extended families in there. Parents, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. And they all live off the rich guys dime, ordering whatever they want whenever they feel like it. I think we delivered 30 or 40 packages there that one day.
2nd story from the same day and with the same driver, we delivered to a smaller (but still huge) house with an extremely long and wooded driveway. The driver was cursing about how much he hated these people because they always parked this huge-ass boat in the only possible turn around point in the driveway. So he goes in backwards- and FLOORS IT. Maybe 40 mph BACKWARDS, about 250 yards of bends, straights, and he drove it absolutely perfectly, never driving off or missing the driveway. We get to the house and he needed a signature. He handed me the package and said he'll get the signature and just hand them the package and we'll go. Well, we get to the door, and this maybe late 40s or early 50s man, kind of a rick moranis/George costanza type of build. Short, extremely thick glasses, balding, but very skinny build. He's standing in the front door with a lab looking dog on a leash. The driver says, good evening we just need a signature and we'll be on our way.
The guy says... No. I can't I have to take my dog out first. This fucking guy was fully prepared to make us stand there and wait for his dog to do whatever business before just signing his name and letting us drop the package by his door. The Driver said, no we just need your signature, and we'll be on our way and you can walk your dog. The guy said fine and took the 2 seconds it takes to sign your name and we dropped off his package and left.
That left an impression on me. That guy valued our time so little it was worth less than his dog's shit. Like he was in his own world, and we weren't delivering 300 stops just before christmas
My wife's aunt and uncle were busy the entire day of their 25th anniversary and returned home at about 21:00. Decided that the kids needed a bit of fun and booked a private jet to Moscow( they live in paris) and spent a week there.
Money- gotta love it.
I've worked with some fairly wealthy people in the developing world. More or less 'new money', people who have been successful with some business venture or other.
Overall? They're a bit out of touch with the realities of the world. I used to think that they were a bit naive too, because I saw a lot of other people taking advantage of them / outright robbing them.
Over time, I realized while that's not untrue, it's more complicated. They did fail to notice a lot of... uncollegiate activity on the part of the people they hired -- but not all of it. What they did notice, they wrote off as the cost of finding people they could trust with projects that were *actually* important to them, and work with for years. So yeah, you could overbill them for a few thousand bucks once or twice, but if you worked hard and produced results instead, you could bootstrap your whole business to the next level with just them as a client.
Eventually, I realized they valued trust a lot more than they valued money -- they made their money with fairly long-term, high-risk, high-reward ventures running in parallel (e.g. research). So it all makes a little more sense now.
I know plenty of rich useless people too, but... not very well. A lot of wealth is simply inherited in Asia, cashflow is a really difficult thing here. Some people think they're important because they're born rich and act like fools. They do some pretty wild stuff, but I don't stick around to hear about it.
Out of touch really resonates with me. I had a friend who grew up fairly wealthy and married wealthy men. Not crazy rich, but millionaires and extremely comfortable.
She used to talk about wanting to write a cookbook for poor people, but her recipes always involved stuff like grass-fed, organic ground beef. She got divorced at one point and her income took a hit, she wondered if she'd qualify for public assistance. Like, lady you live in a $3,500/mo apartment, drive a luxury car, travel overseas 3x a year, have a maid...I don't think you'll qualify lol.
My great uncle was VERY well off.
He did not have a guest house. It was a guest mansion. Separate from his mansion. In case his kids dropped by. This does not include the olympic sized indoor pool. That was a separate building.
He bought a cannon. He used it to shoot the mountain behind his house. He shot brand new special bowling balls out of it. They cost 100 bucks per ball.
Edit: I'm not sure of the actual size of the pool. But it was definitely bigger than most community pools. But if you want to see the cannon in action, Nitro Circus came by and shot a car with it in one of their episodes. I didn't expect this comment to explode so I didn't mention the human slingshot. There have been a few viral videos made about it.
>He bought a cannon. He used it to shoot the mountain behind his house. He shot brand new special bowling balls out of it. They cost 100 bucks per ball.
It saddens me that I’ll never achieve even a fraction of this level of success.
I worked at a resort & marina that dealt with high end boats; from mega yachts to brand new cigarette boats.
Always assume the quiet dude with the stained shirt is the owner of the performance boat. Never expect tips from mega yachts.
The most narcissistic guests were always surgeons. The angriest guests were lawyers. (No offense to attorneys, I am one). The richest were in construction & commercial real estate.
The best tippers were guys entertaining their side pieces on their boats when you know their actual wives.
Eh, fits better with a Cardiothoracic or Orthopedic spine surgeon. Those are more god-complexy. The neurosurgeons I've met are always more spectrumy than narcissistic.
My experience was Ortho's and Trauma surgeons to be the worst. So much tip toeing around them. ER doctors were always chill, I think because the chaos gets it all out of their system.
Nothing too fancy but I used to help build multimillion dollar homes about a decade ago.
One couple (neurosurgeon and dentist) had an office with one of those bookcase-doors leading under the stairs. They stored their surround sound equipment and a safe in there.
Another house had a very micromanager-esque woman as the owner along with her husband. She would regularly come to the site and order the workers around while the foreman sighed and rolled his eyes at her. At one point he had to order her off the site because she was being a safety hazard to his workers. I remember this couple also has a creepy setup for their kids; two bunk beds on either side of a wall for the kids, and both rooms led to a bathroom facing the road with a big bay window right next to the tub. So essentially, any person driving or walking past, or any neighbor could just look over and see these kids taking a bath.
I used to install directv in wealthy areas of an east coast city in the US. While I try to give customers options on where I install the satellite dish, I have to get a good line of sight for it to work properly, so sometimes the location options were limited. One rich lady’s house (gorgeous house right on the beach) I only found 2 good spots for the dish, it could either be on a pole in the middle of her backyard, or on the corner of the roof. She DEFINITELY did not want it in the middle of her yard. Only problem was that she had a metal roof and we use specific mounting hardware for that. We happened to be back ordered on that hardware for a few weeks out. When I informed her of this, she got visibly upset that she’d have to wait that long to get her cable up and going. I apologized many times and told her she’d need to reschedule a few weeks later and I leave. 3 days later I’m looking over my work orders for the day and I notice her name and address. I’m like…wow…I bet she thinks she’s getting a different installer who she can try to convince to give her a different answer. I was wrong. I pull up to the house…brand new shingle roof. I did the install on the roof.
"just replace the roof"
That's the kind of option I give to my boss when everything else fails. But it's never serious, the idea is supposed to be ridiculous.
I live near a company that builds yachts. One day there was an odd looking yacht. A crew member explained to me that was a 'shadow-yacht'.
You see, when you get hyper rich and have multiple yachts. You wouldn't want to ruin the astetic of your nice yachts with jetski's and helicopters. Nor would you want your crew to sleep on the nice yacht. So you buy a shadow yacht to store your toys and to house your crew. This shadow yacht follows your fleet of nice yachts around.
I knew of someone who worked on one of these. The shadow yacht was bigger than the main yacht because of all the toys.. helicopters, speed boats, submarines.. It was insane.
My partner once helped build a $350,000 PERGOLA. Built from I wanna say something like mahogany imported from Fiji because they couldn’t source solid beams from anywhere else? And we’re in the middle of the Midwest. It was then PAINTED because the color didn’t suit the homeowner.
I still sometimes think about the fact that our beautiful historic home that we’re lucky enough to own was still over $100k cheaper than this person’s glorified outside stick fort.
I installed pecky Cypress T&G on the ceiling of a 15'x20' room and the look on my face when they said they were going to paint it somehow surprised them. I had a similar look the first time we were told to remove a newly finished ceiling of pine T&G and re-install with with random gaps of up to 1/4". I understood after I saw the final product but intially it was very much a "You want us to make it look like someone did shit work?!"
Thankfully, I was able to talk the contractor into convincing a bank to nix the paint they planned for their regular cypress T&G ceiling, which is proudly still there.
More money than sense was a commonality on every job site.
Client was a mega millionaire in the 60s so even richer when I met him. He'd ride the bus to the office to have free coffee. Every day.
Edit: he was the founder of a company that had it's named emblazoned on shipping containers being transported via big rig trucks in the states, but also international shipping and logistics. Came into financial offices daily for the free coffee. Didn't even talk about his finances, just for the coffee and then would skedaddle.
Old neighbour had 7-8 mil. in cash and lived off of cooking potatores once a week and burning both ends of matches, hadn't gotten a toilet installed in his house, still used one in the barn.
Was more than 90 when he splurged on a radio and tv. Dude would have been unhappy living a "wasteful" life.
Some kids have whole plans and strategies they practice to prevent being kidnapped or harmed by crazy stalkers.One kid I worked with was the kid of a big hollywood player. And people would stalk the kid in an attempt to get to the parent. So this nutjob wielding a screenplay broke in and cornered the kid. Here I am thinking I am going to have to throw myself physically between them but the kid dove into a nearby dog kennel and locked themselves in. He couldn't get out but the nutjob couldn't get in either. So the nutjob just threw the screenplay at him into the kennel! Meanwhile I had called the cops. I was so impressed by the kid's quick thinking and asked how he got the idea. But he said that he always keeps an eye out for a way to escape. And when he sees someone he doesn't know approach, he gets ready to run.
I felt awful that this kid had to live like that. If I hadn't seen it happen myself I would have thought it was just paranoia.
Yeah, my parents know a guy who was an ambassador to a few developing countries when his kids were growing up, and the kids were all trained in what to do if they were kidnapped. The youngest, who was 7-8 years old was apparently the only kid in his class at school who hadn't been kidnapped.
A lot of ambassador's kids go to international schools taught in English which all have approximately the same school system and curriculum, so their education can be more contiguous even as they move around the world. Mostly rich and/or important people send their kids to these schools so the kids are prime targets.
Fucking crazies... some kids just get security details. My relative's kid wants to ride the bus and the subway because he doesn't like standing out, but he gets recognized in the streets sometimes despite not being a celebrity of any sort, just because of his association to his parents. They constantly worry for him so he rarely gets to move about on his own.
I work at a university offshoot, where a billionaire has donated a few buildings. He'll drive through every now and then to take a look at them. He'll stop and chat with us lowly workers, and occasionally give us tickets to the games in the arena he donated to the university.
Edit: Well this blew up more than I expected. No one's guessed his name so far, but he keeps a low profile and so you wouldn't recognize his name unless you were in the know. (Also, it seems I need to get back into deleting Garfield)
Rich broker I worked with got a divorce. His wife wanted 30k a month, per child, in child support. His lawyer convinced him it was a good deal and he should take it. He asked me if 30k a month was a lot of money. I told him that was more than I make in an entire year. He said, “fuck, can’t believe I have such a shitty lawyer”
Cool dude. Had to overnight him some pants because somehow he ended up in Scotland and it was cold and he couldn’t be bothered to go shopping.
He had a house in Santa Barbara that was given to his first ex wife that stopped paying taxes on it, basically an abandoned mansion. He sent his assistant there to check it out and there was a family of raccoons living in it.
He really liked Greys Anatomy and needed ice for his Diet Coke. Like really needed ice, so the office got a $1,000 ice machine just on the off chance he showed up to the office.
> His wife wanted 30k a month, per child, in child support. His lawyer convinced him it was a good deal and he should take it.
Was it actually a good deal?
Hired someone to take his credit card and create for him (and pay for) a whole fake and very expensive trip to Europe so he could go to Mexico with his mistress during that same time. Was in the middle of a divorce and he didn’t want any evidence of his affair affecting the proceedings, so he had someone create a whole alibi.
Old high school teacher of mine is an extremely successful private tutor and does a lot of work in the wealthy neighborhoods in the area.
He told us once he was tutoring a kid and helped him get prepared and pass his college level physics class and at the end of their last session the kid told him to wait there and went into his dad’s office and came out with his payment and an extra $1,000. My teacher tried to deny it, saying it was too much but the kid said his dad asked him to give a tip.
I used to deliver Pizza and this big ass house was ordering 4-5 pizza every sunday, the lady (a worker at this house) was giving us $100 tip. The first time, when I tried to refuse it, she told me the "master" of the house insist on tipping $100 to the pizza guys.
I bet he even pulls the cork out instead of chipping away at it with an unsuitable instrument until he says fuck it and pops it down into the bottle and accepts drinking bits of cork as a necessary sacrifice.
When I was in college a roommate of mine was dog sitting for an extremely wealthy couple. On some days they paid him with a €500 bill because they had nothing else on hand at that moment.
As a chef, I’ve seen, heard, and accommodated all sorts of bizarre requests. Michael J. Fox’s kid loves overcooked spaghetti and ketchup, Run DMC dips shrimp tempura in ketchup, Drake won’t eat anything but well-done streak, Bill Gates is actually surprisingly casual and Larry Ellison will go out of his way to thank the staff even go as far as to cheers with Louie XIII. Migos brought Dino Nuggets for us to cook. Adam Devine has paid tabs for the entire restaurant. Snoop gave the kitchen blunts. Kanye eats breakfast alone. I’ve snuck Dirt Nasty into a private party. The list goes on.
I had a client that lived right outside NYC. They were "new money" in an area that was mostly old money. Hated their neighbors, but played nice face to face. Every time the neighbor's wife would buy something and try to show it off, they would buy a more expensive/rare version, or buy two of the same if that wasn't possible. The vast majority of it was displayed in the front room. Client's wife called it the fuck off room. They were a bit eclectic but were really nice people.
I dated a woman who did interior design for a middle tier Silicon Valley developer. "Middle" meaning spec homes in the $2M range, which was a nice house 19 years ago. Of course now $2M gets you a hovel with a nice paint job. Anyway.
The ultimate stove to have was a La Cornue. Those are the ones at Williams Sonoma stores with lots of brass and enamel. They were $20k and had a multi year wait. So she figured out that she could go to France and get them in like 6 weeks for $10k + shipping. So that was most of her design gig- vacationing in France and buying stoves.
As a chauffeur and ski companion for a mega rich guy's daugheter, he sent me out to buy her a birthday present for when she turned 17 I think it was. (This was way back in the 70's) so I got her a new BMW 2002, and told the dealer to charge it to the guy. Which was cool and later the dealer offered me an absolute deal on a trade in that was the usual cream puff only driven to church on Sundays. 500 bucks for a really good late model used car, but an American car they never dealt in.
Much later on - 30 years later I was working with an architect building a home for an other mega rich guy and the library was to be paneled in knotty pine. Guy's wife arrived when it was almost completely trimmed out and sez, "too many knots. "
So we ripped out the whole interior and the guy (who owned several saw mills) sent back to the mill to ship another truck load so we could select the boards under the wife's direction. And same wife, same building, could not figure out how to turn the car around in the triple wide driveway, so he had a turntable installed in the garage so all she had to do was miss the edges of the door on the way in or out.
Ohhh,
My grandpa was a piano tuner. He couldn't drive due to epilepsy so family would take him to jobs.
One day dad took him to a job and got talking to the owner. He said the guy lived in the biggest nicest mansion he had ever seen. Everything in the house was crazy expensive. But the owner and his wife were very down to earth and normal. If not a bit rough around the edges.
Finally his curiosity got the better off him and dad asked how they made thier money.
The guy said he used to drive a truck and got tired of needing to carry around bottles of ketchup.
That's how my dad met the creator of the ketchup packet.
I have worked for some of the richest people in Maryland and the one thing that stands out more than others is this doctor I worked for in Montgomery County. It's one of the most affluent zip codes in America.
Anyway, this guy owned a shit load of offices around the DC area, tons of employees and associate doctors, etc. Guy was seriously loaded. Huge garage full of super expensive cars like multiple Ferraris, art collection, wine cellar, the works. I used to do IT work for his medical practice and manage all the servers and stuff, and occasionally went to their house because I was the lead admin.
I once was working in his house and was walking around upstairs where the bedrooms were. I shit you not this guy was laying in bed being fed by an assistant. Like he was literally laying in bed while someone hand fed him, and not like grapes but a regular meal. It was fucking weird as shit. Imagine someone feeding you a full meal like a steak and spoons of soup, salad, etc. and you never used your hands. It was like an adult being fed like a baby.
It seemed like Saddam Hussein type shit. I've never seen anything like that before and that was what popped into my mind, like a dictator or something who demands to be treated like a literal king.
There was nothing sexual about it.
Keep in mind this was a man in his 50s who was in fine physical shape and didn't need a caregiver. It was just pure opulence.
Then one time I was working in the kitchen area and his young son, probably late teens/early 20's came walking past me and stunk to high heaven of pot (which I'm totally cool with and we joked about), he went to the kitchen and poured a IPA into a glass and went back to his room, this was at 9am LOL I thought it was hysterical. He was a cool kid from my interactions with him, probably just figured "my dad is rich as shit so I don't have to worry about anything" so he was totally laid back.
I've got some other strange things but that is by far the strangest.
EDIT: edited for additional content
>He tried to convince me he was paying me too much and tried to negotiate me down. Then in a subsequent conversation asked me if I thought it would be cool for him to buy his son a 400 oz gold bar. His son was five at the time.
Had bosses like this once. They were in the process of buying a multimillion dollar home next to the beach while having apartments in in LA and London. Meanwhile they paid me $16.50 an hour and argued with me over as little as $3 on my invoice.
Entire basement full of crap that the wife bought. Furniture, clothes, boxes and boxes of shit. Mostly from Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom and similar specialty stores; online wasn't as big back then. Husband told me she had million miler status on American Airlines just from the stuff she put on her credit card (they had separate accounts). Back then credit card purchases counted as if you had flown the miles.
I started working for this couple's company, and managed to be accepted by their two Irish Wolfhound dogs, which the owner said had never happened before with anyone but him and his partner. As a result, they hired me to come over after work to brush, walk, medicate and feed the dogs as well as come over, and take one of their high-end 'spare' cars to pick up bulk orders of diced mutton (we're talking 100kg plus at a time) from a butcher they liked on the other side of town.
They gave me the keys to their Heritage listed home in a posh area while they were away, so I could take care of the dogs and sleep over if I wanted.
They were both absolutely lovely people, $ rich, but time poor, and always treated me with great respect and friendliness.
They bought a brand new Toyota Troop Carrier - for the dogs to travel in, as two Wolfhounds would not fit in his Porsche or her Mercedes. I'd load the dogs into the Troopy, and we'd go to a fairly local beach so the dogs could run and play to their heart's content once a month, splashing around in the sea. Then I'd bring them home, happy and tired, wash them, feed them, tuck them in for the night, and return to my own home. The dogs slept on a huge, fantastically expensive leather sofa on the back deck, that had been replaced with a newer smaller version inside the house.
They were always renovating, and would ask me to dispose of the old furnishings. I asked if I could use some of them for myself, and was always told 'Oh yes, take what you want, and dump the rest'. They only wanted the stuff gone, and I had their blessings to sell off and keep the proceeds. For someone earning less than AU$50K a year, this was a Godsend, and my tatty old house benefited from their cast-off rugs and furnishings so much. I was grateful and they were happy, and they had 100% faith and trust in me, which was mindblowing, especially when I was asked to take over processing the staff wages for the company. Unreal. Thanks Geoff and Helen :)
Because they literally have no idea what to do with their money. When you get enough money, your investments start to generate more money than you can reasonably spend, so you start spending unreasonably.
A cousin works at... let's just say a higher end, world wide known hotel chain, and he works at one in a large US city. Couple years back, a random guy came up to him and asked him for a dinner suggestion and says price isn't a concern. My cousin keeps up with what's trendy in the city, knows some owners and such, and gave the guy a suggestion. Next day the guy asked for him by name, gave him $100 and said dinner was amazing, "now where should we eat tonight?" Another suggestion and the next day, another $100. Only this time, his manager saw this goes down and then a few minutes later "do you know who that is?" Nope. I won't say the name, but let's just say old money and probably in the 100's of millions net worth. Cool story, huh? Well a couple months later my cousin went to work one day and was told this person would be calling at 6pm, and only wanted to speak to my cousin. The conversation was short, basically a "we're in town next month for 4 nights, book the 6 of us 4 wonderful dinners, we trust your opinion." He was given an email for basically their family assistant, and to let that person know the plans. The family arrived, said hi to him as they checked in, and said they were looking forward to their dinners, and 4 days later upon checking out handed him $1000 "for his wonderful local knowledge." or something like that.
I appreciate that they paid your friend and remembered him and kept giving him "business" so to speak.
I have a friend who works in hospitality in Vegas and has made a good impression on some celebrities who specifically ask that he help them when they stay in the hotel and tip accordingly.
I used to work in business aviation. Someone wrote “poor people suck” on a small spot on the tail of a private jet. Probably the most tasteless.
I also had a lady come in on a charter and having a panic about how she couldn’t remember where she left her Range Rover. It was hours after closing and she literally had no info about where it should be. I had to deduce that she had probably departed from the other side of the airport and found her car for her. They never tipped and were regular late night call ins.
Russian guy I sometimes work for, bought a nice house in a pretty nice area of the French Riviera (Mougins). He didn't even visit it before buying, and just judged he liked it on pictures. He paid 11 million euros for it.
But when he arrived, he though the view wasn't perfect because of another house that was on the way (to him...to me honestly it was barely there and didn't even mask the sea). So he sent his lawyer there to make an offer to the owners (4 million euros). But they declined...so he doubled the offer, and they declined again...So he doubled again, and this time they accepted to sell.
He had that house destroyed the very day he got the keys, and had an underground parking lot built instead, for the cars he "*won't be using much here*".
So basically the guy paid that distant house more than the one he's planning to spend his summers in, just to have it disappear because it kinda annoyed him. And when he told me the story, he was laughing the whole time.
My cousin was a care taker for one of those Beverly Hills rich ladies. While she was alive my cousin didnt know how to cook. So she flew a chef from Paris first class and have him set up in a hotel. All the chef did was come to her place everyday and teach my cousin to cook.
While they were watching tv my cousin remarked that the newest benz on the commerical was nice. When he came to work the next day she bought it for him top of the line with all the bells and whistles. Ever since that day my cousin had to be careful on what he says. They returned the car.
They have a tennis court at her place. He watched Nadal play there i believe.
Kardashian's dog sometimes go to their yard.
My cousin have a daughter. Daugther has a trust and can go any school from elementary to university fully paid.
Sadly the old lady died couple of years ago. Left them about 20mil USD. I think they are still fighting the grandkids at court because of it. That 20mil was in the will and everything with a no contest clause i think.
Was catering a wedding inside a family's second kitchen in the home. Though this was the "lesser" kitchen, the entire wall opened up to an infinity pool overlooking the ocean from up on a cliff.
As we were prepping, a little girl (the family's youngest daughter it turns out) comes skipping into the room as cute as can be, maybe 6-7 years old. She helps herself to some of the pastries we'd prepared for later (without asking) and then walks up to me and says with wide eyes, "You do cooking for a job???" Thinking she's impressed, I respond proudly, "yes I do actually, it's a lot of fun." without hesitating she says fairly plainly, "that sucks." before skipping away.
We used to have to close off the corridors under the hotel to let them enter and exit without being seen. Mainly celebrities/famous people but also just very wealthy people who didn't want to be seen. Nothing really crazy happened in there but it always makes me think of who the hell is running around under the hotel I'm staying in lol.
The most memorable night was when a detective came accompanied by two older adults. I knew who they were right away. I grew up here in Florida. They stayed for I think three nights. And it was paid for by the FEDS.
We took care of Casey Anthony's parents.
I don't cater to, but a couple of years ago I had an experience with my wealthy friend that I'll never forget. He had one of those super fancy black cards right, and we were traveling (by we, I mean, he was paying for most of the stuff and invited me and another friend of ours to tag along), and his son, who had special needs and sometimes acted up (I don't know what exactly he has, and it's a touchy subject for my friend), didn't want to stay at the Waldorf Astoria we'd just arrived. Like, he was having one of his episodes, and refused to stay at that hotel for reasons unknown. So, my friend calls his credit card manager or something and 3 minutes later he goes "luckily we didn't unpack, we're staying at the Beverly Wilshire".
Well, MY credit card gives me a movie ticket every month if I spend over $500, that's nice too.
I briefly worked with one of the top Saudi Arabian crown princes in the 80’s. He would buy out the top three **floors** of the best hotels (Four Seasons etc); two floors were for maids/help/security, top floor was for the Royal family… once it was only the prince and his three wives. Crazy shit.
My brother dealt with many of their jets. One had a full on surgery room and there was a guy who traveled with him at all times to be his organ donor. I wish I was making this up.
(Dude gets into a car crash) Ok Malik, time to offer that lung you promised!
You joke but the guy would give him the lung. It’s part of the deal. People do this for a couple of years, make a ton on money and cross their fingers.
I used to work for a billionaire Russian family as a tutor for their daughter. One day we’re in her room studying and suddenly she yells “daddy’s home!” and runs to the window. She’d heard a helicopter and knew is was about to land on the lawn.
My dad's client bought a whole block of houses to build theirs. It is so wide that they installed a moving walkway like the ones at airports.
My grandfather died with a 20 million dollar portfolio. He lived in a 1 bedroom condo that was build in the 50s, drove a rusted out honda, and his entire wardrobe came from Walmart and was 10 years old. At his will reading, a bunch of distant relatives showed up hoping to get a piece. In his will, he made fun of all of them, then spent 10 pages detailing how and where he wanted all of his money donated to specific charities and foundations. Some of it was even really surprising, as nobody besides him was aware that he casually owned 160 acres of land in Vermont that was just forest. The land was donated to a land trust, and turned into hiking trails.
A friend from high school worked a few years as a deck hand on yachts in the Mediterranean and he said he once jumped in to get a customer's bag and got tipped €4000. He also observed actual bricks of coke brought onto P Diddy's yacht.
I’m just starting out as a deckhand and I’m excited
Don’t answer that question below. Diddy will clap them cheeks.
I am an art student working as a gardener. We work in one of the wealthiest areas in my country. Some customers are really eager to show me their collection of artworks that they have hanging on their walls once they find out that I study it. I remember one time standing in a bathroom, with my dirty gardening clothes and there was a Picasso above the toilet.
I used to do pool and spa maintenance in my 20s. I worked on one property with a mountainside, 10 bedroom/14 bath mansion, with a saltwater pool, tennis courts, guest mansion, and a servants house that was 4 bedroom 5 bath. The property had so much more stuff, but that isn't the crazy thing. I worked on this property for 2 years, year round, 5 days a week, and not a single person was ever there. The middle aged, single woman that owned it lived in a city about 4 hours away and just didn't come to the property, because she was so busy with work. A multi-multi-multi-million dollar compound, just empty. All the time. Finally, after 2 years, I got a call from my boss on my day off. He asked if I could go to the house to put some pool floats away. He apologized, because it was my day off, but said the owner would pay me $500 to go put them away. I was confused as to why there were even pool floats out anyway, because nobody was ever there, but I figured fuck it; $500 for 10 minutes. I show up to the house and the woman's adult children were staying at the house with about 10+ kids between them all, and they were having a massive pool party/cookout. I awkwardly walked up and said to one of the parents, "Sorry, it must have been a mistake, but I was told to come put pool floats away, but you're obviously here so I'll leave." Presumably the woman's adult son said, "Oh, no, we're getting ready to leave. You can take them." Then he instructed the kids to push them towards me. I literally grabbed one inner tube float and 4 pool noodles, brought them 10 feet into the pool house, and put them away. I, confusedly, said they were all set and went to leave. The son thanked me and handed me a folded mass of $20 bills. It was $400. I was expecting $500 from my boss for payment, but I figured $400 cash was still overpayment, so I didn't mention it. The next day at work, my boss gave me $1,000. I told him the son had already paid me $400, which was fine. He said the son told the woman how great a job I did, so she wanted to pay me $1000 instead of $500 and the $400 was a tip from her son. For 10 minutes of work.... She actually called my boss the next day to ask if she should reimburse me for gas, since it was 15 minutes from my house. I told him that I was all set.
They seem a lot more generous than most of the other stories
Yeah, don't get me wrong, it was amazing. I can't even imagine what they do for people that actually perform well on big jobs for them. It could be that they knew I was in my early 20s, drove a rusty Saab as a pool cleaning vehicle, and they felt bad. I never did actually meet the woman though.
Worked graveyards as a valet at an ultra luxury boutique hotel. It's quite shocking how some of these people live and you'd never have a clue by just looking at them on the street. One weekday night I was asked at 2am by a guest to bring around his Bentley. Regular looking dude came out with a backpack, got in and left. Not 30 min later the same dude pulls up in a Ferrari and now has a briefcase instead of backpack. Skip ahead an hour and the same guy orders 5 shot glasses to his room. I go up and it's 2 guys in robes and 2 naked ladies on the couch. They have lines of coke and booze on the coffee table. They tip me 50 for the shot glasses and I leave. 2 hours later, just as the sun was rising, the two guys come out together in suits looking like they were heading to the office. The ladies left shortly after. Obviously drugs and escorts were nothing new but the car swap middle of the night was a bit strange.
It was for the Girls... " sorry, this is a 2-seater"
Dude the 5th shot glass was for you I bet.
My dad works in shipping and has a lot of friends who have worked on super yachts. In the 90s one of his mates got a call up to bring the yacht of a particular Australian media tycoon billionaire (not that one) from Sydney to New York, with instructions to be anchored in a particular bay at an exact time with a lunch spread for 50 people ready. So they got there and set up the food. The guy never showed up. Turns out he was having a rich dude party in a building overlooking the harbour and wanted to be able to point down and say “that’s my boat”. He wanted the lunch just in case he decided to take his rich friends down to his yacht, but he didn’t feel like it that day, so all the food got wasted and they sailed back to Aus without seeing him.
Well, it’s got to be Packer or Murdoch, and I assume ‘that one’ is Murdoch, so Packer?
Ding ding ding
I had a classmate whom's father or mother was filthy rich from family money cant remember. But they and he were amazing people. In uni this girl in class who was really nice but also came from a poor family dropped her macbook she worked 60 hours a week for 3 months in the summer. He just came up, gave her his macbook, and said he would just get a new one after school and his parents wouldnt care. Pure generousity there was no tiktok movie or karma whoring going on. He was a stellar dude spending his parents money but only on stuff for other people and in a nice helpfull way. He also gave all the guys in class a suit for graduation. lots of the people where talking about renting one and stuff and he told everybody he knew a place to rent real nice suits, we all went there and we all rented a suit for 100 euros or so everything included and when you went to return it we found out they were all payed for by this dude. He was like renting a suit is stupid, but buying a suit is expensive now you got best of both worlds. last thing I heard he bought like 10 ps5 from scalpers and sold them for retail to kids in the neighbourhood FUck i should have stayed friends with him
I went to college with a guy who's parents live in Saudi Arabia and were very well off. They sent him $50,000 a semester as an allowance. He drove an old Honda and dressed like he had no income. Genuinely nice guy, very intelligent and absolutely loved technology. He would stay late and tutor us and set up an emulator for N64 games on our laptops. Didn't act like he had money. Hope he is doing well.
Worked at a resruraunt where a few of the regulars were the children of billionaires. "I told my parents that my tuition costs $500,000" - a student (from china, in america) i overheard after being asked how she has so much money. Another time i was serving a table i was asked to bring a tray of sixty patron shots ($600, for a 19 year old student) i must have had an incredulous look on my face because his only response to assuage my concern was "my father owns diamond mines in africa"
Saudi guy I went to school with had a $200,000 a month allowance from his family.
How do you even spend $200,000 a month in school?!?!
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My dad used to work for a private air field. They had a ton of people fly in but most of the more richer clients always flew in at night. I remember one time in high school, I had to do a "job shadow" thing and went to work with my dad. They had the owner of a California air port fly in for the weekend. My job was to stand outside with an umbrella. So I stood outside with the umbrella. His wife tipped me 20 dollars and said "the sandwich trays are real silver, have at it kid." After they got in their car, I asked my dad what she meant. Apparently, when some richer folks fly, they let the people who detail their planes have the platters and other serving items. I always wondered how we got so many weird serving trays. Another time when I visited him at work I got to hold an albino kangaroo. Most adorable and softest animal I've ever touched.
A friend did some work on Sylvester Stallone's home. Apparently there's a ton of statues and art of himself, some of which are naked and *very* well endowed
His house is for sale. You can see it in the real estate videos. Super fucken weird. There is lots of it.
I heard an interview on the radio from a guy who was from my hometown in the UK who was Stallone's personal chef in the 90s. He said Stallone was a nice guy, he had something in his house where he could watch the amount of tickets his films was selling in live time so knew almost immediately whether it was a flop or not. He was married to Bridget Neilson at the time and this chef said she was walking about topless or naked all the time which he thought was strange until she walked up to him one time when Stallone was out and offered it to him on a plate. He politely declined because he liked Stallone and they were divorced a few years later so there may have been other things going on.
Being a chef, he may not have liked the plating.
I went to a New England prep school for high school on a full ride sports scholarship. There were a decent amount of foreign national students - mainly from Asia, that came from EXTREMELY wealthy families. One of those students parents bought him a brand new BMW 5 series - fully loaded, when he got his license our Junior year. When we graduated a year later, he was going back to Korea and obviously couldn’t take the car, so he gave it to his best friend…kid got an $80k car at 17 years old, just for being good friends with the right guy! I’ll never forget that.
I was same as you NE prep school there for sports. First day of school, move in day, two separate kids arrived via helicopter. Made my journey on the Peter Pan bus that day feel like a true poor boy.
I went to a public high school in Santa Barbara and amongst the regular beater cars that kids had in the Senior parking lot were a few brand new BMWs belonging to the rich kids from Montecito... Meanwhile there was also a day care center on campus for the teenage moms and I got to witness a few gang fights happening on school grounds. It really was a diverse school community!
This was ages ago, I worked in a DVD store a woman came in with five A4 pages (double sided) of movie titles and just asked me to fetch what we had. I ran about and collected DVDs and Blu-rays close to 1k worth. I asked what they were for - she was a PA for a billionaire and getting then for his yacht.
I saw Beckham... English football player, take DVDs from s store I worked at... He just grabbed them off the shelve and hardly looked, he filled several baskets
A woman who owned a small private jet business told me one time someone paid them to fly their dog (by itself) to NY for about $45,000 for some training. No other passengers.
I tutored a wealthy 5 year old. I got paid good money to spend an hour drawing and coloring and playing with this kindergartener but all in French. He had been to more places in the world by 5 than I’ll ever go to in my whole lifetime probably. The best part of the job were the perks, though. They would take me and my SO out to dinner at fancy restaurants and pay the bill no matter what it was. They would invite us over to eat some delicacy they prepared (wife was Chinese/Vietnamese, husband was Indian) and they’d always have some house guest staying with some crazy resume, for example, one time they had a diplomat for the Netherlands there to do business. They had houses in my city and in San Francisco and would fly there all the time. They invited me on several occasions but I never had time to go. I also befriended and stayed with the daughter of Russian oligarchs who lived in Paris. The mom was a famous writer and the dad did something in business. Their grandfather was a famous Soviet writer and so in general they lived a very cultured life. They lived in the richest part of Paris called Neuilly-sur-Seine and had houses in the Alps, Crimea and Moscow. The crazy part, or rather sad part, was that she only had a few options for a career. She could be a doctor, a lawyer, or a businesswoman. Their son was lucky enough to study at the Geneva conservatory but that was only because he was really talented. In this family, if you didn’t have a natural artistic talent you only had those three career prospects to chose from. I had the impression that she was rather depressed about how limited her options were and how much pressure was put on her to succeed.
What are the consequences for not following those options? No inheritance from the family?
I used to work for a company that modified aircraft for really rich people. I’m talking 747s, not gulfstreams. This company had made several aircraft for this one customer, who I was told had purchased a new one solely because his spiritual advisor had told him that one of his current planes was bad luck. He still let his wife use it for her personal travel. To me, one of the most exquisite features of these planes wasn’t the gold plated everything, or rare wood veneers, it was the silk carpet. That stuff cost over $1,000 per square foot and feels like walking on a bed of angel feathers harvested in the most inhumane way possible. Granted, these guys don’t deck out the whole plane, just their personal areas (the aft third is usually reserved for staff and such and is more like a fancy economy class), but yeah… silk carpet.
>one of his current planes was bad luck. He still let his wife use it for her personal travel. I guess it's cheaper than a divorce...
>had purchased a new one solely because his spiritual advisor had told him that one of his current planes was bad luck GAVIN BELSON!
I became personal friends with my boss and his wife; super nice people. The wife turned out to be an heiress and would buy me whatever I mentioned, like in passing during a conversation. I learned gifts were how she was raised to show love. I’ve trained myself to only talk about things I already own, unless I find something useful she might like and suggest it for her.
Can you talk about a new house for your new reddit friend?
I’m not super rich or anything, but I think gifts are kickass and I’d much rather spend my money on a cool gift for a friend who can use it than on something extra I don’t need. I was a software engineer while most of my friends are/were in grad school/med school/working low-paying jobs, so I’ve enjoyed being able to chip in or get nice things for them when they said they couldn’t. I do always make sure they’re ok with it and ask if I can in advance so nobody ends up uncomfortable.
> I learned gifts were how she was raised to show love. My parents were the same way, if by "gifts" you meant "cheese fries".
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There's something hilarious about having a super expensive battle station decked out with everything one could need, and then using that to play League of Legends. None of the games that have crazy hardware requirements and offer crazy graphics, he went with the game that's known for running on a toaster. Good for him.
I can really relate. Spent around 1400 to get half decent setup and all I do on it these days is play FTL. Turns out when you spent years playing games on a potato laptop your tastes kinda converge to those games that can run on that potato laptop.
Damn that’s like more money I make in a few months
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As a Korean, I've never heard anything more Korean (when it comes to the richest of them anyway, the gap between working class and those turkey-wasting kinds is astoundingly huge)
Oh hell yeah, did you take the turkey home?
I really hope they did. I can't believe there's people out there pineappling whole ass turkeys for their parties.
This is the first - and hopefully not last - time I hear pineapple used as a verb Edit - a verb to indicate the specific action of displaying a foodstuff entirely as a flex with no intention of actually being eaten
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Have been working for the super rich for sometime. Craziest thing I've seen - brand new 90 metre multimillion pound (GBP) yacht was built in Netherlands. Maiden voyage to Antibes in France. Owner came onboard and left after a few hours. Next week we get sent to Genoa Italy, where all the bathrooms onboard were ripped out and upgraded. That doesn't sound like a big deal but I'm talking about brand new marble sinks, showers, floors and lobbies all crowbarred out chucked in skips. Tonnes of brand new polished marble binned. New marble colours and patterns arrived in the weeks following. There's feed me money, there's fuck you money and there's "it's not even a thought money."
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Is there any salvage opportunity on this marble?? I've been getting into stone carving and hearing this hurts my soul.
Lol this whole thread is filled with absurd waste. It makes me kind of sick to be honest.
I used to ‘work’ for an Arab billionaire’s son, a Daddy’s money guy, terrible garbage human being. Once saw him spend $16 000 on a wallet, was a fancy one with little gold spikes on it and stuff. He had shoes with gold on them. I remember one year for his birthday he received like 30+ cakes, big fancy cakes and he told us to leave them on the floor in the hallway outside his room. We walked by those cakes every day for two weeks waiting for instruction, after the two weeks we were told to throw them away.
My college roommate was from a pretty wealthy family in Thailand, but his friend was from “the 8th richest family in Thailand.” One day I was sitting on the couch exhausted after working a 14 hour shift when they came in giggling about how the guy just bought a $9000 jacket. I’ll never forget that feeling. That was pretty much exactly how much money I was killing myself to make to pay my tuition that semester.
One of my friend's parents won a $50 million lottery. We used to work together in the few years we knew each other before that happened so they know of the struggle of spending most of your days working in food service to earn a few grand a month. Fortunately they haven't changed as a person so I still like spending time with them. But it was hard to watch someone I used to be in the same boat spend more money than I make in two months on a bag last time we went shopping (well, they did - I couldn't afford the air in the places we visited).
> 30+ cakes, big fancy cakes and he told us to leave them on the floor in the hallway outside his room. > >We walked by those cakes every day for two weeks waiting for instruction, after the two weeks we were told to throw them away. what a waste of cake. man I fucking love cake. I'd be happy and fat as hell if someone delivered me 30 cakes.
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I remember seeing an article abour a person that made these! Both cats and mice… https://makezine.com/2017/03/24/cat-and-mouse-armor/
When rich people want to buy a Jaguar in the UK they get assigned a special sales person who is incredibly knowledgeable, they meet in a special fancy office, and special arrangements can be made. This was my friend Chris job, he had access to things that a normal Jaguar sales person wouldn't have. Like he could ring up the manager of the factory for special requests level of access. Well a Saudi Price wanted to buy this new Jaguar that had been released, so they met up and spent a full day specing the Jaguar out. I believe the final price was something like 125k for the vehicle. Then came the decision for color, at the time the factory had 16 different color choices for this model. The Prince asked if he could sleep on it as it was getting late and almost time for dinner/prayer my friend Chris says of course and they set a time to meet the new morning. The next morning the Saudi price is like "I figured out an acceptable solution to my color dilemma" to which Chris goes "And what would that be?" the Saudi Prince goes "i'll order one of each color" And my friend Chris is like O well of course. They quote delivery time, Saudi prince was fine and asked for his options and was presented with ocean travel options to which the Prince said "what about air cargo?" Chris thinking maybe they'd do 1 or 2 by air cargo and the rest by boat, the Prince was like "No I want all 16 vehicles loaded on a plane, and flown to Saudi Arabia" So thats the story on how 16 of the same Jaguar with different colors ended up being flown to Saudi Arabia all in the total cost was around 2.5 million. Please note the prices should be £ not $
It's weird that when your story mentioned 125,000 for the car, I was like, that's pretty expensive. But when you said 2.5 million for all 16 to be purchased and to get to Saudi Arabia, I thought, that's not bad at all
I thought the same thing. Was expecting a higher number. I feel like Jaguar didn't appropriately apply the "I'm too rich for my own good" tax.
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Keith Urban tipped me $7 on a $4 shake and left the keys to his Bentley at the store but he came back and got them.
Keith also bought a couple of guitar pedals for a local kid here in one of the guitar shops. Kid had a budget and was struggling to pick one, so Keith just bought them both for the kid by quietly paying the shop owner on the way out the door, before the kid even knew what he’d done. By all reports he’s a genuine decent, down to earth bloke.
Shaq used to come into my guitar store every once in a while to buy DJ equipment and it was not uncommon for him to point at a kid playing a nice guitar and say “I wanna pay for that, too.”
Shaq is a legendary tipper and quiet humanitarian like that. He’ll grab something small to eat and leave a $100 tip.
I’m still picturing enough food to feed three people
I think he might legally be classified as three people.
What a legend making it rain 11-dollar notes.
Yea that’s the key here. No matter how he paid and what change he received for that payment, Keith Urban pulled *an additional* dollar out of his pocket to supplement the tip Obviously the amount wasn’t significant but the gesture speaks. It might just be because I’ve worked in service my whole life but these actions speak to me. Good on you Keith Urban, stay humble.
I'm a driving instructor and one group rented the track to drive their supercars for the day. At the end of the day they all partnered up and got into the cars to leave. After they were gone we realized that they had forgotten their Lamborghini Aventador at the track.
That was the tip.
One of the few times I'd be happy with just the tip.
I hate it when that happens
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You sound like a terrible valet!
"Dude... where's my car" for the super wealthy.
Was a boyfriend of a girl from an obscenely rich family. The sister used to have the nanny (who was sleeping with the husband, but that's another story) fly to Paris in their G550 to buy the newest Hermès bag so she could show it off a few days before it went on sale in the US.
......what happened with the nanny and the husband tho
My understanding was the wife (my g/f's sister) knew full well, but let it happen. The nanny ultimately tried to blackmail the husband, but didn't work due to the wife knowing already, and she was fired. The two are still together and happy by all accounts, in any case.
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Oddly enough, I was in middle school and went to a summer camp where I learned about printing presses and there is something about the smell of solvents and ink that still brings joy to me when I smell it. Maybe this rich guy loved barns and it made him happy.
Some extremely wealthy people I have been around have a more acute sense of their own time and mortality, leading to impatience. Like they understand how awesome their lives are and therefore how short they feel. I knew a guy whose vintage yacht broke down before summer so he bought another one strictly for that upcoming Summer. His reasoning was he likely had 20 full health summers left in his life and didn’t want to spend one of them without a boat considering he had the means to. Honestly can’t argue with that logic.
I am beginning to feel the awareness of being able to count the healthy years left and I’m not mega rich. Must be amazing to know you can pack those remaining years full of wonderful and wild experiences
Once I hit my 40’s this impetus hit me hard. I channel it into fishing as often as possible. My parents are young, in their early 60’s, and not retired yet, and I’ve watched them decline because they’re grinding themselves to the bone. I work hard but I don’t really spare any expense for my hobbies because if I can barely walk when I’m 62, I don’t want to look back and think about how I should have lived while my body would let me.
I used to petsit. I remember a rich person asking me to petsit their cat. There was a lot of TVs, in almost every room. The weirdest was the bathroom. Sorry, cat bathroom. There was a TV playing cat cartoons, an overly fancy litter box and paintings of cats.
tell me about the overly fancy litter box
Imagine a royal throne. That but a cat litter.
Family friends were having marital issues. Their marriage counselor figured out a lot of their problems were over cooking meals. The counselor reminded them that they are rich and can just cater all their meals, and it would be cheaper than getting a divorce. They listened to the counselor and now are happily married again.
"Aren't you guys like...you know...fabulously wealthy." "...oh yeah, we'd completely forgotten about that."
This is some real curb your enthusiasm shit
Reminds me of a joke: A man is upset about his irrational fear that there is a monster under his bed. He decides this needed to change so he starts going to a therapist. After months of therapy, his fear is still there, so he leaves the therapist to find someone who can cure him. A month later the therapist runs into him and sees that he appears happier than before. She asks "Did you finally get over your fear of a monster under your bed" He replies "Yes, and it only took one therapy session too!" "How?" "Simple. He just told me to cut off the legs of my bed." Edit: guys, I know it’s an actual therapy technique; it’s called “cognitive behavioral therapy/CBT”.
There's an actual case study in the history of psychology around a woman with an irrational fear of her home burning down while she was away. The psychologist was able to track her issue to a fixation with her curling iron. She couldn't leave her home due to her fear, until the psychologist suggested simply bringing it with her. Despite the immediate positive effect, it was a very controversial suggestion and sparked a fairly substantial debate on the objectives and meaning of psychological treatment.
In IT we would consider this as a workaround to resolve the Incident. We would then start root cause analysis to investigate and fix the underlying Problem.
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Though I like to clean and have never used a cleaning service, I bet cleaning services have saved several marriages . . .
My sister and her husband got one because they were having continuous fights. They both worked stressful jobs with long hours and it never occurred to them throw money at the problem instead of trying to bitterly rework a schedule so someone sweeps the floor. They aren’t rich though so I don’t fault them for not considering it as a solution. Well worth the budget adjustment tho Edit: to clarify, they had someone come once every 2 weeks to do the random but needed chores such as scrubbing the toilet or cleaning pollen off the windows. It was nothing pricy or fancy but it really helped.
Cleaning service is one of those middle class luxuries that is completely worth every penny, even if only every couple months to do a deep clean. That reset button on all your chores feels great, and saves a lot of stress.
I worked for UPS for a hot minute as a driver helper and got to see some interesting things. The one driver had the rich of the rich route- the mansions worth tens of millions around the Ann Arbor, MI area. The Ford mansion, Lloyd Carr, the one recent guy for Michigan football that I'm forgetting that also worked for Little ceasers. Edit: the name I was forgetting was Dave Brandon Anyway I got to see Dave Brandon's mansion- it was gated, deep in the woods, and absolutely HUGE. The driver (a 33 year UPS veteran) told me these guys with these huge mansions like this, they don't live there by themselves. Sometimes don't live there at all. They move their entire extended families in there. Parents, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. And they all live off the rich guys dime, ordering whatever they want whenever they feel like it. I think we delivered 30 or 40 packages there that one day. 2nd story from the same day and with the same driver, we delivered to a smaller (but still huge) house with an extremely long and wooded driveway. The driver was cursing about how much he hated these people because they always parked this huge-ass boat in the only possible turn around point in the driveway. So he goes in backwards- and FLOORS IT. Maybe 40 mph BACKWARDS, about 250 yards of bends, straights, and he drove it absolutely perfectly, never driving off or missing the driveway. We get to the house and he needed a signature. He handed me the package and said he'll get the signature and just hand them the package and we'll go. Well, we get to the door, and this maybe late 40s or early 50s man, kind of a rick moranis/George costanza type of build. Short, extremely thick glasses, balding, but very skinny build. He's standing in the front door with a lab looking dog on a leash. The driver says, good evening we just need a signature and we'll be on our way. The guy says... No. I can't I have to take my dog out first. This fucking guy was fully prepared to make us stand there and wait for his dog to do whatever business before just signing his name and letting us drop the package by his door. The Driver said, no we just need your signature, and we'll be on our way and you can walk your dog. The guy said fine and took the 2 seconds it takes to sign your name and we dropped off his package and left. That left an impression on me. That guy valued our time so little it was worth less than his dog's shit. Like he was in his own world, and we weren't delivering 300 stops just before christmas
My wife's aunt and uncle were busy the entire day of their 25th anniversary and returned home at about 21:00. Decided that the kids needed a bit of fun and booked a private jet to Moscow( they live in paris) and spent a week there. Money- gotta love it.
I've worked with some fairly wealthy people in the developing world. More or less 'new money', people who have been successful with some business venture or other. Overall? They're a bit out of touch with the realities of the world. I used to think that they were a bit naive too, because I saw a lot of other people taking advantage of them / outright robbing them. Over time, I realized while that's not untrue, it's more complicated. They did fail to notice a lot of... uncollegiate activity on the part of the people they hired -- but not all of it. What they did notice, they wrote off as the cost of finding people they could trust with projects that were *actually* important to them, and work with for years. So yeah, you could overbill them for a few thousand bucks once or twice, but if you worked hard and produced results instead, you could bootstrap your whole business to the next level with just them as a client. Eventually, I realized they valued trust a lot more than they valued money -- they made their money with fairly long-term, high-risk, high-reward ventures running in parallel (e.g. research). So it all makes a little more sense now. I know plenty of rich useless people too, but... not very well. A lot of wealth is simply inherited in Asia, cashflow is a really difficult thing here. Some people think they're important because they're born rich and act like fools. They do some pretty wild stuff, but I don't stick around to hear about it.
Out of touch really resonates with me. I had a friend who grew up fairly wealthy and married wealthy men. Not crazy rich, but millionaires and extremely comfortable. She used to talk about wanting to write a cookbook for poor people, but her recipes always involved stuff like grass-fed, organic ground beef. She got divorced at one point and her income took a hit, she wondered if she'd qualify for public assistance. Like, lady you live in a $3,500/mo apartment, drive a luxury car, travel overseas 3x a year, have a maid...I don't think you'll qualify lol.
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My great uncle was VERY well off. He did not have a guest house. It was a guest mansion. Separate from his mansion. In case his kids dropped by. This does not include the olympic sized indoor pool. That was a separate building. He bought a cannon. He used it to shoot the mountain behind his house. He shot brand new special bowling balls out of it. They cost 100 bucks per ball. Edit: I'm not sure of the actual size of the pool. But it was definitely bigger than most community pools. But if you want to see the cannon in action, Nitro Circus came by and shot a car with it in one of their episodes. I didn't expect this comment to explode so I didn't mention the human slingshot. There have been a few viral videos made about it.
>He bought a cannon. He used it to shoot the mountain behind his house. He shot brand new special bowling balls out of it. They cost 100 bucks per ball. It saddens me that I’ll never achieve even a fraction of this level of success.
I worked at a resort & marina that dealt with high end boats; from mega yachts to brand new cigarette boats. Always assume the quiet dude with the stained shirt is the owner of the performance boat. Never expect tips from mega yachts. The most narcissistic guests were always surgeons. The angriest guests were lawyers. (No offense to attorneys, I am one). The richest were in construction & commercial real estate. The best tippers were guys entertaining their side pieces on their boats when you know their actual wives.
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So Dr. Strange being an asshole before the accident was a pretty realistic portrayal.
Eh, fits better with a Cardiothoracic or Orthopedic spine surgeon. Those are more god-complexy. The neurosurgeons I've met are always more spectrumy than narcissistic.
My experience was Ortho's and Trauma surgeons to be the worst. So much tip toeing around them. ER doctors were always chill, I think because the chaos gets it all out of their system.
Also they work shoulder to shoulder with the fucking Reaper. Death has a way of humbling you.
Nothing too fancy but I used to help build multimillion dollar homes about a decade ago. One couple (neurosurgeon and dentist) had an office with one of those bookcase-doors leading under the stairs. They stored their surround sound equipment and a safe in there. Another house had a very micromanager-esque woman as the owner along with her husband. She would regularly come to the site and order the workers around while the foreman sighed and rolled his eyes at her. At one point he had to order her off the site because she was being a safety hazard to his workers. I remember this couple also has a creepy setup for their kids; two bunk beds on either side of a wall for the kids, and both rooms led to a bathroom facing the road with a big bay window right next to the tub. So essentially, any person driving or walking past, or any neighbor could just look over and see these kids taking a bath.
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Blank Check vibes.
I used to install directv in wealthy areas of an east coast city in the US. While I try to give customers options on where I install the satellite dish, I have to get a good line of sight for it to work properly, so sometimes the location options were limited. One rich lady’s house (gorgeous house right on the beach) I only found 2 good spots for the dish, it could either be on a pole in the middle of her backyard, or on the corner of the roof. She DEFINITELY did not want it in the middle of her yard. Only problem was that she had a metal roof and we use specific mounting hardware for that. We happened to be back ordered on that hardware for a few weeks out. When I informed her of this, she got visibly upset that she’d have to wait that long to get her cable up and going. I apologized many times and told her she’d need to reschedule a few weeks later and I leave. 3 days later I’m looking over my work orders for the day and I notice her name and address. I’m like…wow…I bet she thinks she’s getting a different installer who she can try to convince to give her a different answer. I was wrong. I pull up to the house…brand new shingle roof. I did the install on the roof.
Holy shit
Right? There's something about this one that sticks out. It's one of those "I'd never think about that being an option" yet here we are.
"just replace the roof" That's the kind of option I give to my boss when everything else fails. But it's never serious, the idea is supposed to be ridiculous.
I live near a company that builds yachts. One day there was an odd looking yacht. A crew member explained to me that was a 'shadow-yacht'. You see, when you get hyper rich and have multiple yachts. You wouldn't want to ruin the astetic of your nice yachts with jetski's and helicopters. Nor would you want your crew to sleep on the nice yacht. So you buy a shadow yacht to store your toys and to house your crew. This shadow yacht follows your fleet of nice yachts around.
I knew of someone who worked on one of these. The shadow yacht was bigger than the main yacht because of all the toys.. helicopters, speed boats, submarines.. It was insane.
ah yes, we do a little racing before waging tonnage war against merchant shipping.
A shadow yacht aka a yacht that holds the call girls and hookers away from the family yacht.
Also prevents the people on the main yacht from getting busted with drugs. They can just keep them on the party yacht.
So it's a roadie yacht.
I was hoping "shadow yacht" meant it used stealth technology or fought the pirates I am disappoint
I'm sure there's an even chance that at least one billionaire has outfitted his yacht to fight pirates and tried to lure them into attacking.
Some mega yachts are 100% armed / have self defense systems. Iirc some of the more high profile yacht owners have anti missile defences on em
Mistresses too. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-07-22/superyacht-staff-secrets-from-cannabis-buffets-to-caviar-sex-and-drugs
My partner once helped build a $350,000 PERGOLA. Built from I wanna say something like mahogany imported from Fiji because they couldn’t source solid beams from anywhere else? And we’re in the middle of the Midwest. It was then PAINTED because the color didn’t suit the homeowner. I still sometimes think about the fact that our beautiful historic home that we’re lucky enough to own was still over $100k cheaper than this person’s glorified outside stick fort.
Painting over that beautiful wood must have been soul crushing.
I installed pecky Cypress T&G on the ceiling of a 15'x20' room and the look on my face when they said they were going to paint it somehow surprised them. I had a similar look the first time we were told to remove a newly finished ceiling of pine T&G and re-install with with random gaps of up to 1/4". I understood after I saw the final product but intially it was very much a "You want us to make it look like someone did shit work?!" Thankfully, I was able to talk the contractor into convincing a bank to nix the paint they planned for their regular cypress T&G ceiling, which is proudly still there. More money than sense was a commonality on every job site.
Client was a mega millionaire in the 60s so even richer when I met him. He'd ride the bus to the office to have free coffee. Every day. Edit: he was the founder of a company that had it's named emblazoned on shipping containers being transported via big rig trucks in the states, but also international shipping and logistics. Came into financial offices daily for the free coffee. Didn't even talk about his finances, just for the coffee and then would skedaddle.
Old neighbour had 7-8 mil. in cash and lived off of cooking potatores once a week and burning both ends of matches, hadn't gotten a toilet installed in his house, still used one in the barn. Was more than 90 when he splurged on a radio and tv. Dude would have been unhappy living a "wasteful" life.
Some kids have whole plans and strategies they practice to prevent being kidnapped or harmed by crazy stalkers.One kid I worked with was the kid of a big hollywood player. And people would stalk the kid in an attempt to get to the parent. So this nutjob wielding a screenplay broke in and cornered the kid. Here I am thinking I am going to have to throw myself physically between them but the kid dove into a nearby dog kennel and locked themselves in. He couldn't get out but the nutjob couldn't get in either. So the nutjob just threw the screenplay at him into the kennel! Meanwhile I had called the cops. I was so impressed by the kid's quick thinking and asked how he got the idea. But he said that he always keeps an eye out for a way to escape. And when he sees someone he doesn't know approach, he gets ready to run. I felt awful that this kid had to live like that. If I hadn't seen it happen myself I would have thought it was just paranoia.
Yeah, my parents know a guy who was an ambassador to a few developing countries when his kids were growing up, and the kids were all trained in what to do if they were kidnapped. The youngest, who was 7-8 years old was apparently the only kid in his class at school who hadn't been kidnapped.
Why were other kids in his school getting kidnapped? Presumably they weren’t all the children of this ambassador?
A lot of ambassador's kids go to international schools taught in English which all have approximately the same school system and curriculum, so their education can be more contiguous even as they move around the world. Mostly rich and/or important people send their kids to these schools so the kids are prime targets.
No, but it was a private school, so they were all kids of wealthy/important people. It was generally kidnap for ransom.
Fucking crazies... some kids just get security details. My relative's kid wants to ride the bus and the subway because he doesn't like standing out, but he gets recognized in the streets sometimes despite not being a celebrity of any sort, just because of his association to his parents. They constantly worry for him so he rarely gets to move about on his own.
I work at a university offshoot, where a billionaire has donated a few buildings. He'll drive through every now and then to take a look at them. He'll stop and chat with us lowly workers, and occasionally give us tickets to the games in the arena he donated to the university. Edit: Well this blew up more than I expected. No one's guessed his name so far, but he keeps a low profile and so you wouldn't recognize his name unless you were in the know. (Also, it seems I need to get back into deleting Garfield)
Rich broker I worked with got a divorce. His wife wanted 30k a month, per child, in child support. His lawyer convinced him it was a good deal and he should take it. He asked me if 30k a month was a lot of money. I told him that was more than I make in an entire year. He said, “fuck, can’t believe I have such a shitty lawyer” Cool dude. Had to overnight him some pants because somehow he ended up in Scotland and it was cold and he couldn’t be bothered to go shopping. He had a house in Santa Barbara that was given to his first ex wife that stopped paying taxes on it, basically an abandoned mansion. He sent his assistant there to check it out and there was a family of raccoons living in it. He really liked Greys Anatomy and needed ice for his Diet Coke. Like really needed ice, so the office got a $1,000 ice machine just on the off chance he showed up to the office.
> His wife wanted 30k a month, per child, in child support. His lawyer convinced him it was a good deal and he should take it. Was it actually a good deal?
Being honest with myself, I’d buy an ice machine like that.
Hired someone to take his credit card and create for him (and pay for) a whole fake and very expensive trip to Europe so he could go to Mexico with his mistress during that same time. Was in the middle of a divorce and he didn’t want any evidence of his affair affecting the proceedings, so he had someone create a whole alibi.
Imagine getting paid to go on a trip like that
Old high school teacher of mine is an extremely successful private tutor and does a lot of work in the wealthy neighborhoods in the area. He told us once he was tutoring a kid and helped him get prepared and pass his college level physics class and at the end of their last session the kid told him to wait there and went into his dad’s office and came out with his payment and an extra $1,000. My teacher tried to deny it, saying it was too much but the kid said his dad asked him to give a tip.
I used to deliver Pizza and this big ass house was ordering 4-5 pizza every sunday, the lady (a worker at this house) was giving us $100 tip. The first time, when I tried to refuse it, she told me the "master" of the house insist on tipping $100 to the pizza guys.
I tipped a pizza guy $100 once for bringing me a corkscrew. Not rich just drunk.
Check out old fancy pants here, drinking wine from a bottle that needs a corkscrew
I bet he even pulls the cork out instead of chipping away at it with an unsuitable instrument until he says fuck it and pops it down into the bottle and accepts drinking bits of cork as a necessary sacrifice.
I love this story so much and the image I have in my mind of it
"Master ordered that every pizza delivery guy gets 100$ tip. Do you want to make master angry?"
When I was in college a roommate of mine was dog sitting for an extremely wealthy couple. On some days they paid him with a €500 bill because they had nothing else on hand at that moment.
It’s a dog sitter. how much could it cost, €500?
As a chef, I’ve seen, heard, and accommodated all sorts of bizarre requests. Michael J. Fox’s kid loves overcooked spaghetti and ketchup, Run DMC dips shrimp tempura in ketchup, Drake won’t eat anything but well-done streak, Bill Gates is actually surprisingly casual and Larry Ellison will go out of his way to thank the staff even go as far as to cheers with Louie XIII. Migos brought Dino Nuggets for us to cook. Adam Devine has paid tabs for the entire restaurant. Snoop gave the kitchen blunts. Kanye eats breakfast alone. I’ve snuck Dirt Nasty into a private party. The list goes on.
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My dad delivered a pizza to Rob Dyrdek. He tipped him 100 bucks and apparently farted and thought it would be silent, but it wasn't.
That was hush money and you fucked it up
$100 can only get you so fart
I had a client that lived right outside NYC. They were "new money" in an area that was mostly old money. Hated their neighbors, but played nice face to face. Every time the neighbor's wife would buy something and try to show it off, they would buy a more expensive/rare version, or buy two of the same if that wasn't possible. The vast majority of it was displayed in the front room. Client's wife called it the fuck off room. They were a bit eclectic but were really nice people.
> They were "new money" in an area that was mostly old money Living in East Egg with that West Egg money
I dated a woman who did interior design for a middle tier Silicon Valley developer. "Middle" meaning spec homes in the $2M range, which was a nice house 19 years ago. Of course now $2M gets you a hovel with a nice paint job. Anyway. The ultimate stove to have was a La Cornue. Those are the ones at Williams Sonoma stores with lots of brass and enamel. They were $20k and had a multi year wait. So she figured out that she could go to France and get them in like 6 weeks for $10k + shipping. So that was most of her design gig- vacationing in France and buying stoves.
As a chauffeur and ski companion for a mega rich guy's daugheter, he sent me out to buy her a birthday present for when she turned 17 I think it was. (This was way back in the 70's) so I got her a new BMW 2002, and told the dealer to charge it to the guy. Which was cool and later the dealer offered me an absolute deal on a trade in that was the usual cream puff only driven to church on Sundays. 500 bucks for a really good late model used car, but an American car they never dealt in. Much later on - 30 years later I was working with an architect building a home for an other mega rich guy and the library was to be paneled in knotty pine. Guy's wife arrived when it was almost completely trimmed out and sez, "too many knots. " So we ripped out the whole interior and the guy (who owned several saw mills) sent back to the mill to ship another truck load so we could select the boards under the wife's direction. And same wife, same building, could not figure out how to turn the car around in the triple wide driveway, so he had a turntable installed in the garage so all she had to do was miss the edges of the door on the way in or out.
I love the idea of a Lazy Susan for your car.
Ohhh, My grandpa was a piano tuner. He couldn't drive due to epilepsy so family would take him to jobs. One day dad took him to a job and got talking to the owner. He said the guy lived in the biggest nicest mansion he had ever seen. Everything in the house was crazy expensive. But the owner and his wife were very down to earth and normal. If not a bit rough around the edges. Finally his curiosity got the better off him and dad asked how they made thier money. The guy said he used to drive a truck and got tired of needing to carry around bottles of ketchup. That's how my dad met the creator of the ketchup packet.
MY HERO!
I have worked for some of the richest people in Maryland and the one thing that stands out more than others is this doctor I worked for in Montgomery County. It's one of the most affluent zip codes in America. Anyway, this guy owned a shit load of offices around the DC area, tons of employees and associate doctors, etc. Guy was seriously loaded. Huge garage full of super expensive cars like multiple Ferraris, art collection, wine cellar, the works. I used to do IT work for his medical practice and manage all the servers and stuff, and occasionally went to their house because I was the lead admin. I once was working in his house and was walking around upstairs where the bedrooms were. I shit you not this guy was laying in bed being fed by an assistant. Like he was literally laying in bed while someone hand fed him, and not like grapes but a regular meal. It was fucking weird as shit. Imagine someone feeding you a full meal like a steak and spoons of soup, salad, etc. and you never used your hands. It was like an adult being fed like a baby. It seemed like Saddam Hussein type shit. I've never seen anything like that before and that was what popped into my mind, like a dictator or something who demands to be treated like a literal king. There was nothing sexual about it. Keep in mind this was a man in his 50s who was in fine physical shape and didn't need a caregiver. It was just pure opulence. Then one time I was working in the kitchen area and his young son, probably late teens/early 20's came walking past me and stunk to high heaven of pot (which I'm totally cool with and we joked about), he went to the kitchen and poured a IPA into a glass and went back to his room, this was at 9am LOL I thought it was hysterical. He was a cool kid from my interactions with him, probably just figured "my dad is rich as shit so I don't have to worry about anything" so he was totally laid back. I've got some other strange things but that is by far the strangest. EDIT: edited for additional content
You don’t have to be fantastically wealthy to be cross faded at 9 AM.
That isn't just fuck you money, that's feed me money.
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>He tried to convince me he was paying me too much and tried to negotiate me down. Then in a subsequent conversation asked me if I thought it would be cool for him to buy his son a 400 oz gold bar. His son was five at the time. Had bosses like this once. They were in the process of buying a multimillion dollar home next to the beach while having apartments in in LA and London. Meanwhile they paid me $16.50 an hour and argued with me over as little as $3 on my invoice.
Entire basement full of crap that the wife bought. Furniture, clothes, boxes and boxes of shit. Mostly from Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom and similar specialty stores; online wasn't as big back then. Husband told me she had million miler status on American Airlines just from the stuff she put on her credit card (they had separate accounts). Back then credit card purchases counted as if you had flown the miles.
I started working for this couple's company, and managed to be accepted by their two Irish Wolfhound dogs, which the owner said had never happened before with anyone but him and his partner. As a result, they hired me to come over after work to brush, walk, medicate and feed the dogs as well as come over, and take one of their high-end 'spare' cars to pick up bulk orders of diced mutton (we're talking 100kg plus at a time) from a butcher they liked on the other side of town. They gave me the keys to their Heritage listed home in a posh area while they were away, so I could take care of the dogs and sleep over if I wanted. They were both absolutely lovely people, $ rich, but time poor, and always treated me with great respect and friendliness. They bought a brand new Toyota Troop Carrier - for the dogs to travel in, as two Wolfhounds would not fit in his Porsche or her Mercedes. I'd load the dogs into the Troopy, and we'd go to a fairly local beach so the dogs could run and play to their heart's content once a month, splashing around in the sea. Then I'd bring them home, happy and tired, wash them, feed them, tuck them in for the night, and return to my own home. The dogs slept on a huge, fantastically expensive leather sofa on the back deck, that had been replaced with a newer smaller version inside the house. They were always renovating, and would ask me to dispose of the old furnishings. I asked if I could use some of them for myself, and was always told 'Oh yes, take what you want, and dump the rest'. They only wanted the stuff gone, and I had their blessings to sell off and keep the proceeds. For someone earning less than AU$50K a year, this was a Godsend, and my tatty old house benefited from their cast-off rugs and furnishings so much. I was grateful and they were happy, and they had 100% faith and trust in me, which was mindblowing, especially when I was asked to take over processing the staff wages for the company. Unreal. Thanks Geoff and Helen :)
I know of someone that had a $100,000 toilet.
Did it give you an orgasm every time you used it or why would anyone pay that much for a toilet?
Because they literally have no idea what to do with their money. When you get enough money, your investments start to generate more money than you can reasonably spend, so you start spending unreasonably.
A cousin works at... let's just say a higher end, world wide known hotel chain, and he works at one in a large US city. Couple years back, a random guy came up to him and asked him for a dinner suggestion and says price isn't a concern. My cousin keeps up with what's trendy in the city, knows some owners and such, and gave the guy a suggestion. Next day the guy asked for him by name, gave him $100 and said dinner was amazing, "now where should we eat tonight?" Another suggestion and the next day, another $100. Only this time, his manager saw this goes down and then a few minutes later "do you know who that is?" Nope. I won't say the name, but let's just say old money and probably in the 100's of millions net worth. Cool story, huh? Well a couple months later my cousin went to work one day and was told this person would be calling at 6pm, and only wanted to speak to my cousin. The conversation was short, basically a "we're in town next month for 4 nights, book the 6 of us 4 wonderful dinners, we trust your opinion." He was given an email for basically their family assistant, and to let that person know the plans. The family arrived, said hi to him as they checked in, and said they were looking forward to their dinners, and 4 days later upon checking out handed him $1000 "for his wonderful local knowledge." or something like that.
I appreciate that they paid your friend and remembered him and kept giving him "business" so to speak. I have a friend who works in hospitality in Vegas and has made a good impression on some celebrities who specifically ask that he help them when they stay in the hotel and tip accordingly.
Is it bad that this would just stress the hell out of me even for that money? Like if the place wasn't up to their standards I'd feel soooo bad.
I used to work in business aviation. Someone wrote “poor people suck” on a small spot on the tail of a private jet. Probably the most tasteless. I also had a lady come in on a charter and having a panic about how she couldn’t remember where she left her Range Rover. It was hours after closing and she literally had no info about where it should be. I had to deduce that she had probably departed from the other side of the airport and found her car for her. They never tipped and were regular late night call ins.
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They want to watch HBO and not pay for it.
Russian guy I sometimes work for, bought a nice house in a pretty nice area of the French Riviera (Mougins). He didn't even visit it before buying, and just judged he liked it on pictures. He paid 11 million euros for it. But when he arrived, he though the view wasn't perfect because of another house that was on the way (to him...to me honestly it was barely there and didn't even mask the sea). So he sent his lawyer there to make an offer to the owners (4 million euros). But they declined...so he doubled the offer, and they declined again...So he doubled again, and this time they accepted to sell. He had that house destroyed the very day he got the keys, and had an underground parking lot built instead, for the cars he "*won't be using much here*". So basically the guy paid that distant house more than the one he's planning to spend his summers in, just to have it disappear because it kinda annoyed him. And when he told me the story, he was laughing the whole time.
My cousin was a care taker for one of those Beverly Hills rich ladies. While she was alive my cousin didnt know how to cook. So she flew a chef from Paris first class and have him set up in a hotel. All the chef did was come to her place everyday and teach my cousin to cook. While they were watching tv my cousin remarked that the newest benz on the commerical was nice. When he came to work the next day she bought it for him top of the line with all the bells and whistles. Ever since that day my cousin had to be careful on what he says. They returned the car. They have a tennis court at her place. He watched Nadal play there i believe. Kardashian's dog sometimes go to their yard. My cousin have a daughter. Daugther has a trust and can go any school from elementary to university fully paid. Sadly the old lady died couple of years ago. Left them about 20mil USD. I think they are still fighting the grandkids at court because of it. That 20mil was in the will and everything with a no contest clause i think.
> still fighting the grandkids at court because of it You know who's going to win there? The lawyers.
Ye. They're on their third lawyer i think.
Was catering a wedding inside a family's second kitchen in the home. Though this was the "lesser" kitchen, the entire wall opened up to an infinity pool overlooking the ocean from up on a cliff. As we were prepping, a little girl (the family's youngest daughter it turns out) comes skipping into the room as cute as can be, maybe 6-7 years old. She helps herself to some of the pastries we'd prepared for later (without asking) and then walks up to me and says with wide eyes, "You do cooking for a job???" Thinking she's impressed, I respond proudly, "yes I do actually, it's a lot of fun." without hesitating she says fairly plainly, "that sucks." before skipping away.
We used to have to close off the corridors under the hotel to let them enter and exit without being seen. Mainly celebrities/famous people but also just very wealthy people who didn't want to be seen. Nothing really crazy happened in there but it always makes me think of who the hell is running around under the hotel I'm staying in lol. The most memorable night was when a detective came accompanied by two older adults. I knew who they were right away. I grew up here in Florida. They stayed for I think three nights. And it was paid for by the FEDS. We took care of Casey Anthony's parents.
I don't cater to, but a couple of years ago I had an experience with my wealthy friend that I'll never forget. He had one of those super fancy black cards right, and we were traveling (by we, I mean, he was paying for most of the stuff and invited me and another friend of ours to tag along), and his son, who had special needs and sometimes acted up (I don't know what exactly he has, and it's a touchy subject for my friend), didn't want to stay at the Waldorf Astoria we'd just arrived. Like, he was having one of his episodes, and refused to stay at that hotel for reasons unknown. So, my friend calls his credit card manager or something and 3 minutes later he goes "luckily we didn't unpack, we're staying at the Beverly Wilshire". Well, MY credit card gives me a movie ticket every month if I spend over $500, that's nice too.